Let this be a lesson. After posts by John Gruber and Shawn King, this happened to Violet Blue. "The misinformation gave a significant number of people fuel to stalk me, attack me for hours at a time, malign, insult me in disgusting ways, threaten me with weapon-specific violent death (an axe), and lead social media attempts to force me to lose my job over the matter. Many referenced John Gruber, and/or his post as they did this. Plans were openly made to make media to attack me - another Angry Mac Bastards podcast." Disgusting story, and sadly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened, as Blue notes in her article. I don't like talking about these matters (you don't want to know the kind of crap that gets thrown my way at times), but I can assure you my inbox has seen its share of pure vitriol after Gruber links to an OSNews piece. It ain't pretty.

The problem is that when it turns almost religious. Me and my manager (Apple Fanboi) would regularly trade jibes at one another about Mac/Windows etc etc, in the same way my OpenBSD mate would trade jokes about respective OSes.

We need a better definition here. You need a religion that is willing to attack people and lie for the "Truth." Specifically, we are talking about a kind of politicized fundamentalism here. An example from my own religious background of Christianity. There are Christians who dislike Darwin's theory of evolution, and misrepresent it, either deliberately, or through an ignorance that frankly doesn't place a high value on accuracy. Further, they then attack the character of those they perceive as enemies of the faith.

Contrast this with other religious people, who actually value truth telling highly. In the computer sphere, I would consider a high number of Linux users to be followers of a religion. It's a religion that emphasizes certain values like freedom, sharing, stewardship, and community. It is a community that has its zealots, like me, who seek to spread Linux awareness and use, but that's a long way from "lying for the sake of the Truth."

There are always going to be people that act like sheep online, irrespective on whether they own Apple products or not.

I don't think the people described by Violet Blue are acting like sheep. They are acting like a mob targeting an enemy. Sheep don't do this. They band together for protection. These guys want to intimidate, kill and destroy. They don't want protection; they want power.